


Stardusted Freckles

by catfishofoldin99colours



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Autistic Keith, Cuban Lance, Other, general team bonding, i hope i wrote that ok because i'm not autistic, keith can sing, kind of, oc included, she's my OC and isn't mentioned much, this is really small sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 16:04:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9131611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catfishofoldin99colours/pseuds/catfishofoldin99colours
Summary: Keith is good at many things. Singing is surprisingly one of the few talents he had that no one knew about.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> I wrote this a while ago and it's my first fic here! It's kinda small and honestly I wasn't gonna post it anywhere but a nice friend said they'd like it so here it is ^^  
> (also i included my OC in this - for context her name is Purjja and she's a gigantic bony grumpy space cat.)

“Hey, anyone mind if I put the radio on again?” Lance asked, not too loudly (for which Shiro’s throbbing head was grateful), and went to turn it on anyway.

“Just so long as you don’t try singing again, we’re fine with whatever you decide to do, Lance.” Allura commented without looking up from her book.

“Oh come on, my singing’s not that bad!” the Cuban boy retorted loudly as he switched on the old radio to a less popular tuning station. Shiro shushed him, grimacing as Lance’s raucous voice grated his ears. It wasn’t that he hated to hear Lance talk – quite the opposite, he was happy that Lance was so jovial recently. But dealing with his fourth headache in three days was taking its toll on his already crumbling psyche, and his patience was wearing very thin. He felt a soft pat on his shoulder, and looked over to see Keith glancing worriedly out of the corner of his eye as he rubbed Shiro’s back.

“Oops, sorry, Shiro!” Lance said sheepishly. Shiro closed his eyes again as the blue paladin sat down at the table.

It was a lazy, rainy afternoon. The Altean Castle had landed on a friendly planet, Jkoriskar, in need of supplies and repairs, a few days ago. They had meant to leave as soon as the ship was finished, but heavy thunderclouds, lashing rain and creepy green lightning had kept them grounded for three days now. During those three days, among other things, Hunk and Pidge had managed to secure some spare parts from local junk shops and scrap heaps on the planet, and together with Coran, and sometimes Keith and Lance, had managed to build and fix all kinds of things. Purjja’s necklace didn’t fizzle up anymore thanks to some rewiring, and the old Altean kettle actually boiled in less than thirty minutes. They’d also fixed the old radio Lance had found a few weeks ago, and subsequently been subjected to all of Lance’s favourite songs, bad singing, and even worse dancing.

Ok, so his dancing wasn’t actually that bad, but his singing sure as hell was. True, it wasn’t like the godawful caterwauling that Purjja had grown so fond of on moonlit nights; but it _was_ fairly terrible. And the annoying thing was, he knew perfectly well that he couldn’t sing to save his life, but he didn’t care! He’d walk around the Castle singing to himself, or worse- rapping.

It was starting to drive everyone insane, and so many of the Castle residents much preferred to have the radio on. Coran and Allura enjoyed learning about the music culture of Earth (which was lucky because the team had a very wide range of music tastes), and the remaining paladins and Purjja were saved from telling Lance to shut the ever-loving hell up (which was beginning to affect his monstrous ego by only a very slight amount).

Lance himself leaned over on the table and tapped his fingers to the beat of the song – an old 80s not one many of them recognized, but he tapped nonetheless. Next to him, Pidge typed up some ridiculously complicated code for something science-y (even Coran had given up trying to decipher what she was doing), while Hunk made progress on the lovely scarf he was knitting for no other reason than something to do. On the other side, Shiro leant face-down on the table, similar to Lance, with an ice-pack on his head and a cushion under his cheek, while Keith sat curled up in his seat next to him, concentrating furiously on the 6x6 Rubik’s cube he had been solving all day. On the other side of the ‘living room’, Allura was curled up under a fuzzy blanket with a book, and Coran was lying on the couch, idly twiddling his moustache, while Purjja lay in a big, dark, cat-like coil on the plush carpet, snoring gently.

Around half an hour passed before the radio station stopped playing songs and diverted to obnoxious adverts. Lance stopped tapping and frowned, before getting up and turning down the volume. He switched between a few stations, but none of them seemed to satisfy him, so he turned the device off completely, sighing as he flumped back into his seat. Keith solved his cube and dumped it on the table.

“Want me to mess that up again?” Lance offered, pointing to the 6x6 cube. Keith stared for a good five seconds, nodded, and folded his arms tightly as Lance twisted the squares around again. Since Lance had bought the puzzle as a stim toy for Keith’s autism, it was customary that if Keith solved it while Lance was nearby, then Lance had to mess it up again. This worked nicely because although Lance didn’t know much about Rubik’s cubes, he knew enough to make the puzzle challenging for Keith. The only problem was that it took a fair amount of time to mess up the cube properly; time that was currently filled with silence due to the absence of the radio’s noise.

A full minute passed before Coran said

“I thought you wanted the radio on, Lance?”

“I did, but it’s that time of day where every station is playing crap, and I’m not allowed to sing, so, y’know.” The blue paladin shrugged as he continued to fiddle with the cube.

“Thank the lord.” Pidge remarked. Purjja suddenly let out a low rumble, and did that weird cat-thing where she turned over so she was lying on her back with her legs in the air, body curved in an arc on the floor. Her tail flipped once, twice, then settled as she resumed her deep sleep. Lance ignored Purjja after her growl, and stuck his tongue out at Pidge.

“Too bad the rest of us are too shy to sing, I like having some background noise.” Hunk said. Lance opened his mouth to argue but Allura’s ice-cold voice stopped him.

“Lance, we have talked about this before. No, you are not going to sing, regardless of how willing you are.” The Cuban boy huffed and resumed messing up the cube.

“I’ll sing you a song if you want one that badly.” Keith’s rough voice piped up suddenly. Three pairs of eyes flew to him in surprise.

“Huh?” Pidge asked.

“I said, I’ll sing you a song if you want me to.” Keith repeated, freckled face going faintly pink with a blush. Shiro snorted.

“Dude, I’ve heard you sing, I know you can’t.” he smirked. Keith looked confused, then his face lit up with a grin of his own.

“Oh, you mean that Galaxy Garrison welcome party they held for us when we first joined.”

“Yeah, where you jumped on a chair and belted out the chorus of ‘Highway to Hell’ really freakin’ badly. Honestly I’m surprised the glasses didn’t shatter.” Shiro scoffed from his folded position on the table. Pidge and Hunk looked between the red and black paladins as they discussed this, Pidge especially interested as this was the first time she was hearing about it.

“Pfft, you really thought that was me singing? Dude, I was putting on a show! Y’know, make the other cadets think I was like them, ok?” Keith replied. He seemed pretty relaxed, so Shiro, with a tired smirk, decided to wind him up further.

“Uh-huh, and your whole ‘I’m not following their stupid orders’ speech a year later was all just a show too, I’m sure.” He riled. Keith raised a dark eyebrow.

“What, you don’t believe me? Even after all we’ve been through together?” he mock-pouted.

“Dude, what is there to believe?” Lance half-laughed back. “If Shiro says you can’t sing then stop trying to argue otherwise!” he smiled, indicating he didn’t mean any offense. To his surprise Keith blinked and looked down, seemingly in defeat of the argument, although there was still a soft smile on his lips. Lance looked to Shiro for an opportunity to continue the conversation, but soon saw there wouldn’t be one, and turned back to the cube.

Another long minute passed. Shiro sighed tiredly. Purjja snorted. Allura turned a page. Hunk finished two rows of his scarf.

Suddenly a soft, singsong voice floated out of seemingly nowhere, and most heads turned, to find it was coming from Keith.

“ _If you’ll be my star, I’ll be your sky. You can hide underneath me, and come out at night._ ” He sang the lyrics softly and slowly, with a gentle hesitation, like his mouth was dry. His eyes were closed and his head bowed as he sang, lightly, quietly.

“ _When I turn jet black, and you show off your light, I live to let you shine… I live to let you shine._ ” His voice was warm and tender, lilting slightly on the longer vowels and cradling the consonants so they weren’t as harsh. The remaining Castle residents stopped what they were doing and turned towards him silently, mesmerised by his angelic voice.

Then he changed key, and his tone went slightly deeper “ _But you can skyrocket away, from me, and never come back if you, find another galaxy… far, from here, with more room to fly… Just leave me your stardust to remember you by…_ ” Lance had never heard anything so heart-breakingly raw and beautiful. Keith’s voice was like a warm ray of morning sunlight, creeping out of the darkness and gingerly stepping into reality to bring light and feeling to the world. The husky, gravelly textures of his words slid easily into the mellow, quietened tones of his voice. Every note was goddamn perfect, and the lilts he applied to certain parts of the song made it that much more intriguing and ear-catching.

“ _Stardust, to remember you by…_ ” With a final breath, Keith finished the song and exhaled, opening his eyes to the faces of everyone looking very surprised. An uncomfortable silence followed in which Keith’s speckled cheeks turned bright red.

“What?! You wanted a song and I gave you one!” he cried, indignant.

“Dude. That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.” Lance mumbled – but it was loud enough for Keith to hear. He turned to the blue paladin, and both boys stared at each other, wide-eyed and red-faced, both in amazement and disbelief at what had happened.

**Author's Note:**

> Also this is the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn4EIv1-uz0


End file.
